Posts tagged with "Healthline"

Prescription pills that many people take for what ails them actually may be putting them at risk for dementia, results of a study conducted by the UK’s University of Nottingham, Aldermoor Health Centre, and University of Oxford have demonstrated.

Imagine if Caitlyn Jenner were still using a credit or debit card with the imprinted name, Bruce Jenner. Every time she used her payments card, her transition would be exposed—and she could legitimately be asked to prove her identity.

That’s a reality for many transgender and nonbinary people—and one that MasterCard aims to address with its new True Name program.

On June 17, MasterCard announced that it was making a commitment to address that challenge. In a press release, the Purchase, New York-based payments company said, “ We are working with partners to create a product, as well as a sensitive and private process free of personal questions, that will allow for true names, not deadnames, to appear on cards without the requirement of a legal name change. This will ease a major pain point for the transgender and non-binary community.”

MasterCard calls on the industry to apply these standards for everyone, ensuring a way for people’s financial products to reflect their true identity.

Overall, nearly one-third (32%) of individuals who have shown IDs with a name or gender that did not match their presentation reported negative experiences, such as being harassed, denied services, and/or attacked, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality. As such, many transgender individuals choose to forego the cost, complexity, and anxiety associated with official name and gender changes. Until now, this discrimination has carried through to their cards and payment mechanisms.

“We are allies of the LGBTQ community, which means if we see a need or if this community is not being served in the most inclusive way, we want to be a force for change to help address and alleviate unnecessary pain points,” said Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for MasterCard Randall Tucker. “This translates not only for our MasterCard employee community but for our cardholders and the communities in which we operate more broadly. Our vision is that every card should be for everyone.”

Loperamide treats diarrhea by slowing down the rhythm of digestion, so that the small intestines have more time to absorb fluid and nutrients from the foods we eat. It works by affecting proteins called opioid receptors found in cells in the gastrointestinal tract. It signals these opioid receptors to keep working. Unlike other opiates, however, loperamide doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier into your brain or spinal column. Therefore, it doesn’t cause a high or relieve pain like other opiates can. However, stopping the drug abruptly or taking it in extremely high dosages can be life-threatening, according to Healthline.

Misuse of the drug is particularly alarming because non-prescription drugs like loperamide are inexpensive, readily available online and in retail stores, undetectable on routine drug tests, and buyable in bulk.

The researchers reviewed cases of patients with loperamide exposure reported by medical toxicologists to a national registry, the Toxicology Investigators’ Consortium (ToxIC), from January 2010 to December 2016, reporting a growing number of cases over that time frame. The Poison Control Center database (National Poison Data System) also reported a 91% increase during that time period—which in 2015 included 916 exposures and two deaths.

The patients reporting misuse in the Rutgers study were predominantly young white men and women. The majority used extremely high doses of loperamide, the equivalent of 50 to 100 two-milligram pills per day.

Nothing attracts a crowd like a baby kicking in utero. When a pregnant woman’s ever-expanding bump suddenly starts perambulating, it’s hard to avoid an all-hands-on experience with anyone nearby. But why is that infant thrashing around in there?

Author Kimberley Whitehead, along with co-authors Judith Meek and Lorenzo Fabrizi, examined the sleep patterns of 19 newborns between the ages of 31 weeks and 42 weeks. Some of the infants studied had been born prematurely—the accurate age of a baby from conception, regardless of when he or she actually is born. For instance, an infant who was one week old but born at 35 weeks would be 36 weeks old. Infants are considered full term anywhere from 37 to 42 weeks.

The brainwaves are extremely fast in premature babies. (In the case of premature babies, they would still be in the womb when these fast brainwaves occur.) By the time the babies are a few weeks old, the fast brainwaves naturally disappear.

“Spontaneous movement and consequent feedback from the environment during the early developmental period are known to be necessary for proper brain mapping in animals, such as rats. Here we showed that this may be true in humans too,” Lorenzo Fabrizi said in a statement.

For her part, Whitehead believes that the findings could help hospitals to provide an optimal environment for infants born prematurely. “We were surprised that although the movement-evoked fast brainwaves disappear a few weeks after the average time of birth, movement continues to trigger slow brainwaves,” she said.

This draws on her team’s previous earlier research, which showed that different types of brainwaves can perform different functions in unborn children. That research showed that a big change happens at full-term age because different types of sleep start to be associated with particular brainwave patterns.

Whitehead said they plan to continue studying movement in babies, but they are also focused on how aspects of brain development are processed, such as touch and painful stimuli (as with a blood test, for example).